Candidates, outside groups and party officials are
quietly maneuvering for a nomination
fight that goes all the way to the bitter end.
By Ben Schreckinger of Politico
Marco Rubio’s campaign, along with others, is preparing to enter the GOP shadow primary to gain an advantage over Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who lead the field. | Getty
Mysterious outside groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates, Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rule books to brush up on a process that hasn’t mattered for decades.
As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz divide up the first primaries and center-right Republicans tear one another apart in a race to be the mainstream alternative, Republicans are waging a shadow primary for control of delegates in anticipation of what one senior party official called “the white whale of politics”: a contested national convention.
The endgame for the most sophisticated campaigns is an inconclusive first ballot leading to a free-for-all power struggle on the floor in Cleveland.
“This is going to be a convention like I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” said veteran operative Barry Bennett, who managed Ben Carson’s campaign until December and is now advising Trump. “It’s going to be contentious from Day One.”
The primaries and caucuses that dot the nominating calendar and whose results drive headlines will decide whom most delegates are bound to vote for on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. Should the first ballot fail to produce a nominee, the outcome of the convention will depend on results of the parallel primary now underway for the hearts and minds of delegates.
Each state party has its own rules governing delegate selection, a process so steeped in nuance and legal ambiguity that there are multiple blogs dedicated to wading through it all.
In some states, campaigns select slates of their own delegates, making it relatively easy to send loyalists to Cleveland.
In many others, delegates to Cleveland will be selected at a series of conventions held at the congressional district and state levels. Candidates who are able to get supporters to show up at those conventions and elect loyal delegates would be rewarded in a multiballot Republican convention — even if those delegates are bound to vote for someone else in the first round.
“Just because you get x number of delegates, it doesn’t mean that it’s your people unless you go to these conventions and get people to run,” said Marco Rubio’s deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson. “You want to make sure that they’re with you on subsequent ballots.”
Rubio, who openly contemplated the possibility of a contested convention in an AP interview last week, is not the only candidate whose campaign is preparing to contest the shadow primary.
One Southern state party chairman said that the calls from campaigns seeking data — such as contact information on eligible delegates and the names of people who have served as delegates in past years — began in late 2015. The chairman said calls have also come from third-party vendors who declined to identify which campaigns are their clients. “There’s a bit of skulduggery. … I suspect some super PACs are behind some of this.”
Toby Neugebauer, a Cruz super PAC megadonor who has long maintained that this nominating contest would be drawn out, said he has invested in custom delegate-tracking software but did not provide further details of his efforts on that front.
The Southern state party chairman who called an open convention “the white whale of politics” said the possibility is driving side conversations at party meetings. “We all sit around and talk about it at [Republican National Committee] meetings.”
Bennett said that when he worked for Carson, whose supporters have been among the most enthusiastic and visible at activist gatherings like the Conservative Political Action Conference, the campaign knew its candidate’s passionate grass-roots support would allow it to excel at the herculean organizing challenge of sending loyal representatives to a contested convention.
“We thought we could do very well at the micromechanics of getting delegates selected,” said Bennett. “People like Trump, who’s got a social media following of 5 million, or Cruz, who has good connections at the grass-tops level, will be fine. I don’t think any of the establishment candidates are that well positioned.”
Now that Bennett is advising Trump’s camp, he has not stopped planning for a floor fight in Cleveland. One Trump insider said Bennett is angling to serve as the mogul’s liaison to the national convention.
Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, declined to comment for this story except to write in an email: “That is not the role Barry [Bennett] serves.”
After losing the Iowa caucuses to a better-organized Cruz earlier this month, Trump said he had only recently learned the meaning of the term “ground game.” But according to a person involved in briefing the New York billionaire, Trump has understood the underlying mechanics of the nominating process since at least last year.
As currently written, the rules governing the national convention require a candidate to have won a majority of delegates in eight states or territories to be eligible for the nomination. A candidate will need a majority of delegates — 1,237 — to win it.
“He knows about the number, and he knows about the process. He’s aware of the eight states. He’s aware that it could be taken away from him. He knows about the 1,237, and he knows that they can have people stay in as long as they want just to stop him from getting over the Rubicon.”
And Trump’s campaign has not ignored the basics of delegate selection.
In December, his mid-Atlantic team sent out an email seeking potential delegates for the District of Columbia’s March 12 delegate convention. In January, it sent out another email listing requirements for supporters seeking to run as Trump-endorsed delegates in Maryland.
Representatives of the campaigns of John Kasich and Jeb Bush did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
As a true political outsider, Trump, despite his history of business deal making, would likely find himself at a disadvantage after the first ballot in Cleveland, even if he enters with more delegates than any single rival.
“Donald Trump would get smoked at an open convention,” said the Southern state party chairman, who said he had seen little evidence that Trump is courting the 150 national committee members and state chairs who will serve as automatic delegates to Cleveland and unofficial leaders of their state delegations if the convention turns into a floor fight. “If they were smart, Donald Trump would call every state chair and strike up a friendship.”
A person intimately involved with Trump’s political operation confirmed that the businessman’s campaign is not courting RNC members and lamented that omission as a mistake. “Somebody’s got to be talking to these pricks and at least taking them off the accelerator and making sure they’re not working against you,” the person said.
While a contested convention could be the last chance for the Republican establishment to deny the nomination to Trump or Cruz, it is far from clear that a multiballot process will hand power to an establishment-friendly candidate such as Rubio.
In an earlier era, a handful of party bosses could settle on a nominee in a back room. Now, the current rules of delegate selection in many states are set up to reward grass-roots activists with trips to the convention, making it difficult for party officials to control the process.
In New York, where party officials have greater control over delegate selection than in most states, state GOP Chairman Ed Cox said he expects party central-committee members will confer with the campaign of whichever campaign won in each congressional district when selecting delegates from that district.
(Cox predicts the convention will end on a “contested first ballot,” in which a clear front-runner is able to pull in enough unpledged delegates to forestall a multiballot free-for-all.)
“It’s harder to stack the delegate deck,” Bennett said of the diminished influence of party power brokers. Instead, he said the RNC’s best chance to affect the outcome is its power to recommend rules for governing the convention, which delegates will vote on before turning to the task of selecting the nominee. “If Carson and Trump and Cruz don’t agree on something, they can splinter them.”
One former RNC chairman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggested another soft power that the national party could assert over the outcome. The RNC’s Committee on Arrangements controls the logistics of conventions, including the allocation of staging space for campaigns’ whipping operations. In the heat of a floor fight, such details could become meaningful.
But another former chairman, Michael Steele, warned that any attempt by party insiders to nudge the nomination to a favored candidate would be disastrous. “If they want to monkey around with this process and try to fix it, they’re asking for all hell to break loose,” he said.
“Any inkling that state party officials or national party officials are colluding and conspiring to prevent a particular individual from getting the nomination,” he said, “will basically create Armageddon with the base.”